Chase the Morning
by Irhaboggles
Summary: While wandering the city streets alone at night, Glinda the Good meets a woman who, though she does not appear to be from Oz, resembles her in the most uncanny and personal of ways. That woman then offers her some sage advice and encouragement to chase her dreams, her morning, before it is too late.


Glinda walked alone on the Emerald City streets. It was midnight, so Glinda knew that nobody would be out to see their beloved "good witch" and wonder why she in Oz she was out so late, and why she looked so unhappy. The reason for her behavior would've been beyond them. To Glinda, however, it made perfect sense. Glinda was missing Elphaba. But it wasn't even the sense of loss that weighed so heavily on her. It was the fact that because Elphaba had chosen to take up arms against the government, which Glinda worked for, Glinda was legally obligated to speak out against Elphaba and paint her as some sort of monster. So on top of missing her best friend, Glinda was also forced to, almost daily, make public speeches against that best friend. It really was quite spirit-breaking.

Glinda shook her head with an angry groan, bitter about the idiocy of the masses, the lies of her boss (the "Wonderful" Wizard of Oz), the public fall from grace that Elphaba was forced to take, and of her own foolish, selfish choices that got her to where she was at the moment. Glinda hated how much she felt like a caged bird, and she hated how blind the rest of the world seemed to all of this. A corrupt government was able to get away with slander just because everyone bought into the lies of the "great" leader, and no one dared to speak out against him, whether it was out fo fear or stupidity. Glinda hated it. She hated it all! But most of all, she hated how long it had taken her to realize these truths. She hated her own blindness most of all (metaphorically speaking, of course).

"Ooof!" Glinda gasped as she ran right into another late-night city-walker. Hmmm, maybe her blindness was literal too.

"My apology," the person who ran into her apologized quickly. Based on the voice, it sounded like a woman a few years older than Glinda, herself. Her voice was low and rich, smooth and gentle, soft and honest. It was almost hypnotic and had a very pleasing quality. But even further down that than, she realized that this woman sounded tired, and not just in the sense that she wanted to get to bed. She sounded sad, lonely, helpless and angry. She sounded just the way Glinda felt. But it was all wrapped up under that gentle and sweet voice. If Glinda didn't know better, she would've thought that she had just run into a long-lost twin of hers.

"The fault was mine," she said quickly. "Might I ask who you are?"

"That's a good question," the woman replied, using that same bitter and self-deprecating tone Glinda, herself, so often used whenever she was alone and trying to figure out who in Oz she was and who she was supposed to be, for worse or for better.

"Well then," Glinda decided to humor the woman just because she could hear so much of herself in her voice. "What are you called?"

"Everybody calls me Blind Mag," replied the woman.

"Blind Mag," Glinda almost laughed. What were the odds that she would be here, contemplating blindness, only to run into a blind person?

But Glinda caught herself before she could actually laugh and she quickly reigned in her tone.

"Is there any way I can assist you?" she asked, noting that Blind Mag did not seem to possess a cane or a guide dog or any other human caretaker.

"Oh! No, no," Blind Mag laughed. "I'm not really blind."

"What? Really? How many fingers am I holding up?!" Glinda, despite her attempt at appearing more professional, couldn't help but be skeptical and, in her haste, she resorted to one of the oldest tricks in the book. She held up three fingers.

"Three," Blind Mag answered, clearly amused rather than offended by Glinda's questions.

"Then why do they call you 'Blind Mag', Blind Mag?" Glinda asked next.

"Well, I used to be blind," Blind Mag admitted. "But now, I can see..." there was something ominous about the way she said this, but before Glinda could ask, she extended a hand. "You can just call me Mag, by the way," she said.

"Ok then, Mag," Glinda took Mag's hand and shook it. "You can call me Glinda."

Glinda paused for a moment, waiting for this woman to recognize her, but nothing came of it. In the back of her mind, Glinda couldn't help but be surprised. She was such a big public figurehead that she had never before met anyone who didn't recognize her, yet Mag genuinely didn't seem to recognize her or her name. But there was something Glinda wanted to know more than just why Mag didn't know who she was. What Glinda wanted to know was,

"When you say you used to be blind, what does that mean?"

A couple hours later, Mag and Glinda were sitting along together on the grassy banks of Restwater, facing the east. They both had finished telling their tales and Glinda was struck now more than ever by how similar the two of them really were.

"I'd swear that we were long lost twins," Glinda said bitterly as she compared their tales.

"Not quite," Mag said with a small smile as she stroked Glinda's arm.

"I didn't mean it literally," Glinda replied.

"Nor I," Mag said. "What I mean is, while our stories are nearly identical, you are still young, and I am not." Mag paused sadly. "I want to leave you with the hope that you will go to all you're meant to, all I failed to. In you is a world of promise and we have both been kept in bondage but you can learn from all my failures..." Mag trailed off again, meeting Glinda's eyes with a sad, yet hopeful, expression.

"Wait, what do you mean?" Glinda asked in confusion. Mag's words were frustratingly simple and cryptic at the same time. Although Glinda knew that Mag was stuck in a very similar position to her own (a songbird stuck in a gilded cage forced to sing praises for a lying tyrant of a country leader), how could Mag expect Glinda to learn from her when they were already both at the same level in life? But as it turns out, Mag wasn't talking about careers at this point, she was talking about something far more important...

"Your Elphaba is still alive, no?" Mag asked and Glinda swallowed as she finally realized what Mag was hinting at here. Mag, herself, used to have an Elphaba. It was a strong, hotheaded, courageous young woman named Marni, and Mag had been madly in love with her. But fear had always kept Mag quiet, and now Marni was gone, dead, and Mag never got the chance to tell her how much she loved her. This was what Mag was talking to Glinda about now. Glinda still had time to reunite with her lover and make the world a better place with her. Mag's chance was over, but not Glinda's. Not as long as Elphaba remained alive. But with each passing day, the odds looked worse and worse.

"You must go and find her!" Mag encouraged. "Find her while you still can and be brave! Have her help you change the world for the better, because you both know that the lives you are living right now are wrong. You can change that if only you unite in common cause! And I believe that you can do it, Glinda! You must! I want you to-" Mag stopped speaking and, suddenly, her eyes began to make a clicking noise. Wait. What? But before Glinda could ask, a beam of light shot out of Mag's eyes and at the end of that ray of white light, there stood a hologram. It was of a woman, and she sang:

"Chase the morning! Yield for nothing!" and somehow, Glinda knew it was a projection of Marni...

But after the hologram finished singing, it flickered away and Mag's eyes clicked back to normal.

"How'd you do that?" Glinda couldn't help but ask.

"Do want?" Mag asked playfully.

"That! That eye thing," Glinda was too stunned to realize Mag was messing around with her. Broken as she was, Mag still had a sense of humor.

"These eyes can do more than see," Mag replied with a dry smile. She hadn't been lying when she told Glinda she was born blind. But she had neglected to mention that the new eyes she received were robotic. Glinda could only blink in amazement.

But after a few more seconds passed, Mag became serious once again.

"I want you to promise me you'll let your life be a dream. Live with integrity and honesty," she pleaded. "It's too late for me, but you still have a chance! So don't look back until you're free to chase the morning!" Mag's eyes whirred to life again and Marni, once more, began to sing.

"Chase the morning! Yield for nothing!" it was like she was begging Glinda too, speaking through Mag's eyes from beyond the grave.

When Mag's eyes turned off and returned to their normal blue once again, Glinda sighed heavily. This was a lot to take in.

"I know what you want me to do, but I don't know if I can," the blond confessed at last, but Mag smiled compassionately down at her.

"I know how you feel, but you must be brave, for it is better to die standing than to live life on your knees," she said. "So please do this for me..." her voice was soft and gentle and there was a maternal quality to it as she embraced Glinda tightly.

"Ok, I will," Glinda promised at last as she and Mag finally ended their tight embrace.

"They may call you Blind Mag, but you see far more than they do," Glinda added as she smiled at Mag. Even though the two were no longer hugging, Glinda still held Mag's hand in her own. She squeezed it fondly, and Mag returned the gesture.

"The same to you," she said. "I know it feels like a curse but, if used correctly, you can give sight to everybody else, and all without hurting them. You can use what you see now to enlighten others later and give them eyes just the way you and I received ours..."

Around this time, during Mag's motivational speech to Glinda, the sun began to rise over the surface of Restwater.

"There's the morning. Better go chase it," Glinda teased lightly as she stood up and helped Mag to her feet.

"I will," Mag said, then she gently spun Glinda around until she was facing west. "Now go and chase yours," she whispered into Glinda's ear, and Glinda felt Mag's warm, comforting grasp sliding away. She trembled but, determined to prove her courage to Mag, she took a bold step forward.

"I will," she said with a firm voice, but when she received no response at all, she turned around. Mag was gone.

In her wake, however, there was one single feather. It was quite large, black and tipped with red. Somehow, Glinda knew it to be Mag's symbol. She picked it up and smiled at it before turning around to face the west again.

"Ok Mag. I promise, I promise that I will. I promise I will chase the morning. For you, me, Elphaba, Marni, and all the rest of our worlds. I will chase the morning until at last I have caught it. I promise..."

**AN: Wicked crossover with Repo the Genetic Opera (favorite movie EVER) because Glinda and Blind Mag are quite a lot alike (they're both famous, beautiful figureheads whose job it is to spin the lies of a corrupt leader or face a very harsh punishment for rebellion. They're also miserable and hate the gilded cages they are trapped in and they are both implied to be lesbians, in love with their no-longer-present best friend. Mag's friend is dead, and Glinda's may as well be because she's been in hiding for so long).**

**(TBH, the backstory to the adults in Repo is very Wicked-esque. If Mag is Glinda, Marni is Elphaba, Nathan is Fiyero and the Wizard is Rotti. It's not a perfect alignment, but it's surprisingly close. Wicked also has a steampunk aesthetic, and Repo does too, so there's that).**

**Long story short, this is just me comparing Wicked to my favorite movie EVER and noticing how similar two of their characters are. Additionally, both Mag and Glinda are my favorite characters of their respective stories.**


End file.
